Been out in the mountains and found you've had to pay a steep price for having the kids looked after?

As if the cost of Alpine holidays weren't enough to depress British skiers, many tour operators are cashing in with an all or nothing childcare approach.

Uppermost in the minds of parents booking a ski trip is the need for qualified childcare, usually with ski school in the morning and play activities in the afternoon.

Some operators, such as Esprit and Neilson, offer discrete morning and afternoon care packages that can be bought separately or combined.

Others, such as the expensive tour operator Powder Byrne, sell only all-day programmes, from 9am to 4pm. But there's one catch common to all. The packages are typically sold in six-day blocks that must be paid for in full whether or not the children attend them all.

And so they should, said a Powder Byrne spokesman, in a cheerfully dismissive way. The company quotes a staggering